Professor David Croisdale-Appleby OBE

Professor David Croisdale-Appleby’s lifelong passion has been social justice. He is an inspirational, high-profile leader and strategic thinker in education, health and social care and dementia care, nationally and internationally. He has made impactful and lasting changes to major areas of society through innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership of the highest order, all achieved almost entirely unpaid. This award, however, focuses specifically on his influence and impact on education as a route to social justice. As the first lay chair of the Royal College of Physicians in its 500-year history, whose mission is “to educate, improve and influence for better health and care”, David restored its finances from years of deficits and steered it through the perils of the Covid pandemic. In other roles he has carried out breakthrough work to help doctors from BAME backgrounds win Clinical Excellence Awards, created Open University educational scholarships for unpaid carers, made radical innovations in medical education, authored for the government his ground-breaking review of social work education (2014), taken Durham University to be among the top 1% of business schools globally, and transformed the charity Dementia UK.  Overall, David has played a leading role in transforming our society through his passion for social justice. He is undoubtedly highly influential and a role model for selfless voluntary commitment.